Saturday, 21 April 2012

App drawer spam: Facebook and others

Update: looks like Facebook agrees that adding junk icons was a bad move, because they disappeared from the next edition of the app.

The latest Facebook update doesn't just kill some bugs and add some features to the Facebook app, it also violates the "one app, one icon" rule.

Facebook is not the only one. GO Launcher fills your app drawer with a handful of icons, including one that takes you to the GO Store where you probably don't want to go. And Google Maps comes with junk like Latitude for which in-app access is apparently not enough, so it makes your app drawer even more cluttered than it already is.

Ray of light: GO Launcher lets you hide all the app drawer icons that you don't want to see.

So what's new in Facebook? There's an extra camera icon in your app drawer to shoot pics straight to Facebook, because the share menu in your camera app and gallery don't cut it for the Facebook beancounters. The messaging service of Facebook wasn't used enough for Facebooks tastes either, so in comes an extra icon. Both extra icons point to the same Facebook app where the normal Facebook icon already takes you.

As for the Facebook app itself, it sucked and it still sucks. You're better of with the mobile website instead. For Facebook Messenger there are plenty of excellent multi-network IM apps out there, such as imo.

Update: looks like Facebook agrees that adding junk icons was a bad move, because they disappeared from the next edition of the app.